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Henry VIII

Henry and his Wives

Henry's Last Years

Summary

Between 1537 and 1540, all of the 300 remaining Catholic
monastaries and convents in England were suppressed by Henry VIII's government.
A few of them resisted the new order, and several abbots were charged
with high treason. Several prominent Catholic aristocrats, such
as the Marquess of Exeter, suffered similar fates, being drawn
and quartered for their religious allegiances. Henry's campaign
against Catholics was accompanied by a fervent campaign against
Protestantism. In October 1538, the bishops of England were ordered
to search for Anabaptists, members of a small Protestant sect,
burn their books, and turn over to the government any who refused
to renounce their Anabaptist faith. Several Anabaptist men and
women were burned at the stake the following month. November 1538
also saw the show-trial of a prominent Lutheran, John Lambert.
Henry himself sat in Lambert's judgment at Whitehall palace, and
Lambert was sent to be tortured and burned at the stake.

1540 brought many more trials and executions. In July,
Henry staged a sensational trial and execution in the name of the
new Church of England. Three Protestants and three Roman Catholics were
tried and dragged through the streets of London. The Protestants
were burned for heresy, and the Catholics drawn and quartered,
the fullest punishment for treason. The most important figure to
be sent to the block that summer, however, was Thomas Cromwell,
who had once been Henry's most powerful minister. The Anne of Cleves
disaster had been Cromwell's downfall, but his death without a
trial was made possible, as well, by accusations that he had been
using his position as the king's Viceregent to protect Lutherans
and to see that the orthodox Six Articles were not enforced throughout
the realm. He was condemned as a "detestable heretic" and beheaded
for treason. Henry's chief orthodox ministers, the Duke of Norfolk
and Bishop Stephen Gardiner, led the successful effort to overthrow
Cromwell.

Over the next few years, Henry oversaw many more executions, including
that of his fifth wife, Katherine Howard, who was beheaded in 1542.
Most of the executions were carried out for religious reasons.
In the spring and summer of 1543, Henry issued a prohibition against
reading the Bible in English–an activity associated with the spread
of Protestant heresy–and a number of Protestants were burned at
the stake. Three summers later, a young woman named Anne Askew,
was condemned for distributing Protestant literature to the people
of London. She was brutally tortured and could hardly stand at her
own trial. She was burned at the stake, along with a number of
martyrs for the Protestant faith, in June 1546.

The human toll of Henry's religious persecutions was felt
in England around the same time of his final wars in France and
Scotland. The French war, which ended withe the Peace at Ardres
in 1546, was very costly. With only the small city of Boulogne
to show for victory, Henry had spent well over two million pounds–an astonishing
amount of money in the sixteenth century–in the financing of his
last military adventures. Along with all the English lives lost
on French battlegrounds, the royal treasury, known as the exchequer,
was bankrupt by the end of Henry's reign, and the financial independence
of the Crown was essentially destroyed.

Analysis

With the beheading of Thomas Cromwell and Henry's wife Katherine
Howard, the executions of numerous individuals both Protestant
and Catholic for their faith, and the expensive, rather futile
war in France in the mid-1540s, Henry firmed up his historical
reputation as a great tyrant. In examining the later years of his
reign, destruction seems to be the common denominator in so many of
Henry's policies and actions: destruction of the monastaries, destruction
of the newly arrived Protestant religion and the lives of its adherents,
destruction of his wives and of a succession of his ministers,
and finally the destruction of the royal treasury.

Henry was no doubt feared as a tyrant by those who knew
him and by those who swore allegiance to him from afar as their
king. The royal household was full of intrigue and fear. One statement uttered
that could have been construed as an affront to the king's person
could mean the end of a career, and courting the king's wrath–as
Cromwell did when he brought Anne of Cleves to England–could mean
the end of one's life. Cromwell was not even allowed to stand trial
in his own defense, but instead had his fate sealed in Parliament
with a Bill of Attainder. It is ironic that Cromwell–who had been
so important to Henry in the years of the break with Rome and who
had been instrumental in the executions of men such as Sir Thomas
More–was hurried away to his own execution by the same powers he
had helped to strengthen.

Through all of these unfortunate events, Henry himself
remained convinced of his personal righteousness. With equal zeal,
Henry wished to stamp out both Popery, as Roman Catholicism was
called by its enemies, as well as Protestantism. The test of a
heretic usually concerned the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Near
the time he was burning Protestants and beheading Catholics for
treason, Henry proudly sent the Catholic Emperor Charles V a copy
of the religious primer that was used throughout England to teach
the doctrines of its new Church. The orthodox doctrine of Transubstantiation
figured prominently in the text, and Henry wanted Charles to see
it, so that he could see how the Church of England was orthodox,
even as it rejected Popery.

Henry's ruthless actions in the name of the Church of
England can be somewhat counterbalanced by the conviction of many
loyal to the new regime that the changes, both religious and political, were
of the greatest importance to England and occasionally called for
strong-armed enforcement. The draining of the royal treasury, however,
and the loss of life in France for the sake only of Boulogne, seem
to merit less understanding. The war in France was carried out largely
because of Henry's desire for a sort of "last-hurrah" on the continent:
Boulogne was of very little strategic importance, and the war itself
was essentially a futile attempt to win a bit of personal glory
for Henry in his old age. It cost Henry popularity back home in
England, though the success of his armies in Scotland was able
to offset the effect.